The Times does a little op-ed for the sticks, noting that Frederic Schwartz is having a little trouble with the — um, sorry, this is obvious — spiraling costs for his proposed memorial for Westchester County.
His initial claim that the project could be built for $200,000 turned out to be off by a factor of four, and then some. The current projection is for $900,000. He can now take a seat at the crowded table of architects who become notorious for misleading and/or bullying the public over costs (the best story of which I know is that of I. M. Pei, who was nicknamed “You Will Pay” by the Dallas press when the city’s symphony hall was under construction — a story I have never been able to verify, at least courtesy of Google, so it may be apocrypha). I don’t really have an opinion on the value aspect (the numbers aren’t that large, after all), I only question the potential ethics of the circumstance, since the act of creating a memorial, for artists and architects, is often not one of selfless contribution, but a key step in their own memorializing. It would be very irresponsible to charge Schwartz with any particular misrepresentation, but there is an ethical component of design that mandates balancing concept and cost. One should suggest only what is plausible within the expected parameters (though I don’t believe the Westchester competition had a preordained budget), or have a clear enough understanding of what one’s recommendations will require, and on this count there a failure that should be acknowledged. Though it won’t benefit Schwartz (he’s working for free) as often is the case with cost overruns, it still sullies a process that is imaginably raw for supporters of the project — though I should note I am not one of them. I don’t support the welter of monumetalizing that is underway in the region. The closest thing to a reasonable suggestion I know of isTadao Ando’s, and nothing moving past the proposal stage has come close to the intent of a concept such as this.
Gate-d.
I’ve been doing some cursory reading of Gates commentary and heard from a number of friends. Many people and reviews have focused on the visual transformation: the vistas that are changed by the presence of a framing device, and other formal effects. One thing I have noted from the photographs, which isn’t so apparent when there, is the effect of framing people — and by framing I mean in the narrowest sense. Some longer photos make the people look almost trapped, given the propensity to walk through and not around The Gates. This is the result of a couple of circumstances: more areas are off-limits during this season, and the ground has been damp much of the past week and thus people are not encouraged to break away and find disparate points from which that can observe The Gates from within the park, but outside the boundary of any path.
This is as much an effect of how we understand public space and the intent of English garden planning as the structure of the artwork. Vistas were carefully constructed, and the placement of paths was a subtle way to control the experience of the view. One person had commented to me as they were being raised that it was interesting to see the paths marked in a much more evident way. Now, they not only mark the walks, they become much more restrictive framing devices. It also reveals the impact of the current preservation strategies. Most of the larger areas that Olmstead created were intended as commons, places for people to congregate under the same ideal of shared space as found in English towns. Now, most of the common spaces in the park are bordered by fencing, and several have been reserved for sporting events. So there is little relief to the path movement, and this is one of the instances where the failure of such policies is starkly in evidence (the typical argument is that the wear and tear of foot travel makes it impossible to remove the fencing). One friend commented to me that The Gates also make travel more directional, with most crowds moving in a single direction. This also has somewhat to do with framing. On narrower paths, The Gates’ structure constricts the walkway by more than ten percent. Such small changes have a magnified impact; add to it perhaps a sense that most art consumption experiences tend to be directional, and many people probably fall into the convention of following the person in front of them as part of how one experiences art. Both these conditions are unfortunate and not likely an intentional result. The fascination of Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s work is the defamiliarization one experiences from the intervention, and constricting oneself to such a determined path reduces this experience (and limits one’s understanding). So wear some boots and climb some fences (or least some rocks).